Excerpted
from “Looking Around” in Bird by Bird:
Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
“Writing is
about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on. Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that
we’re all up to here in it, and
probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another…
“The writer
is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in ‘The Farmer in the Dell’
standing there alone but deciding to take notes. You’re outside, but you can see things up
close through your binoculars. Your job
is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are,
and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible
sense. Then you can recognize
others. It’s simple in concept, but not
that easy to do…
“It is
relatively easy to look tenderly and with recognition at a child, especially
your own child and especially when he is being cute or funny, even if he is
hurting your feelings. And it’s
relatively easy to look tenderly at, say, a chipmunk and even to see it with
some clarity, to see that real life is right there at your feet, or at least
right there in that low branch, to recognize this living breathing animal with
its own agenda, to hear its sharp, high-pitched chirps, and not get all caught
up in its cuteness…in those moments, you see that you and the chipmunk are
alike, are a part of a whole. I think we
would see this more often if we didn’t have our conscious minds. The conscious mind seems to block that
feeling of oneness so we can function efficiently, maneuver in the world a
little bit better, get our taxes [or homework] done on time…
“Obviously,
it’s harder by far to look at yourself with this same sense of compassionate detachment. Practice helps. As with exercise, you may be sore the first
few days, but then you will get a little bit better at it every day. I am learning slowly to bring my crazy
pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself,
so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with
respect. Try looking at your mind as a
wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the
neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the
newspaper. So I keep trying gently to
bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and
noted with a kind of reverence. Because
if I don’t learn to do this, I think I’ll keep getting things wrong.
“I honestly
think in order to be a writer, you have learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?
“Let’s
think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut
down. Think of those times when you’ve
read prose or poetry that is presented in such a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a
glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a
sudden everything seems to fit together or at least to have some meaning for a
moment. This is our goal as writers, I
think; to help others have this sense of – please forgive me – wonder, of
seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in our
small, bordered worlds. When this
happens, everything feels more spacious.
Try walking around with a child who’s going, “Wow, wow! Look at that
dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that teeny baby! Look at the
scary dark cloud!” I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world –
present and in awe…
“There is
ecstasy [joy] in paying attention…If you start to look around, you will start
to see. When what we see catches us off
guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers
hope. You look around and say, Wow, there’s
that same mockingbird; there’s that woman with the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope
because she’s in it up to her neck, too, yet everyday she puts on that crazy
red hat and walks to town. One of these
images might show up dimly in the lower right quadrant of the imaginary
Polaroid you took; you didn’t even know at first that it was part of the
landscape, and here it turns out to evoke something so deep in you that you
can’t put your finger on it. Here is one
sentence by Gary Snyder:
Ripples on the surface of water –
were silver salmon passing under –
different
from the ripples caused by breezes
“These
words, less than twenty of them, make ripples clear and bright, distinct
again. I have a Tibetan nun singing a
mantra of compassion over and over for an hour, eight words over and over, and
every line feels different, feels cared about, and experienced as she is
singing. You never once have the sense
that she is glancing down at her watch, thinking, “Jesus Christ, it’s only been
fifteen minutes.” Forty-five minutes
later she is still singing each line distinctly, word by word, until the last
word is sung.
“Mostly
things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each
syllable of life as life sings itself.
But that kind of attention is the prize.
To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote
for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass
– seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a
colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.”
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| Source: Salon.com |
Anne Lamott (1954 - ) American fiction/non-fiction writer, political activist;
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life; Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.; Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year; Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith; Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
